Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0024523 (malabsorption)
 7,319 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Xylose absorption was measured, within ten days of being admitted to hospital, in 54 alcoholics with neurological abnormalities. Small-intestine malabsorption was demonstrated in 19. Classified according to the customary clinical diagnoses, 16 of 49 with alcohol polyneuropathy had abnormal values, with no correlation to nerve conduction velocity. There was also no difference among 14 in predelirium and eight in delirium. However, all four patients with Wernicke's encephalopathy had a malabsorption syndrome. These results are similar, also quantitatively, to those reported in the literature in alcoholics without neurological signs. Alcohol may be involved in the pathogenesis of alcoholic polyneuropathy both as a toxic factor and also via nutritional deficiency.
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PMID:[Alcohol and malabsorption in the pathogenesis of peripheral and central nerve damage (author's transl)]. 113 26

The most common forms of polyneuropathies are the alcoholic and diabetic polyneuropathies. They each constitute 1/3 of all polyneuropathies. The first symptoms shown by the alcoholic polyneuropathy are symmetric sensory disturbances with loss of tendon reflexes and of vibration sense in the peripheral segments of the lower extremities. At the beginning one almost always finds pressure pain in the calves. Important differential clues in diagnosis compared to the diabetic neuropathy, are the age at which the disease begins, the degree to which the autonomic nerve fibres and the cranial nerves are affected, as well as the form of manifestation. Pathogenetically, a direct toxic alcohol effect can above all be suspected in accordance with the typical electrodiagnostic findings with a neurogenic pattern in the EMG in the case of normal or slightly diminished conduction velocity, and in agreement with the morphological finding of an axonal degeneration in most of the biopsies. Possibly, in a small number of cases a vitamin deficiency or a malabsorption can play a causal role. The prognosis is good by complete abstinence from alcohol.
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PMID:[Differential diagnosis, pathogenesis and therapy of alcoholic polyneuropathy]. 301 50

Chronic alcoholism is a medical, economical and social problem. Motility and mental function disorders are among the complications of chronic alcoholism and have been known for more than two centuries as "alcoholic paralysis", and are caused by alcoholic neuropathy. The pathogenesis of alcoholic neuropathy does not appear to be identical with central nervous system disorders which are caused by chronic alcoholism and it seems that it results from a failure of the protection barrier systems in the peripheral nervous system. To the pathogenesis of alcoholic neuropathy includes: 1. direct toxic effects of alcohol on the cellular population of the central nervous system and other tissues, especially of parenchymatous organs (in particular of the liver), 2. indirect metabolic and exotoxic changes mediated by malabsorption, maldigestion and secondary caloric and energy deprivation, 3. effects of genetic factors. (Fig. 2, Ref. 23.)
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PMID:Pathogenesis of alcoholic neuropathy. 1206 Oct 83